Wednesday, 25 April 2012

LIKE a photograph, a brilliant
drawing or a graphic impression can prove more eloquent, more potent and
memorable than a thousand words. Poet-graphic artist Arun Kolatkar's offering —
in visuals sans words this time — makes one do a double take at first acquaintance.
For myriad valid reasons.

The late Kolatkar, to the public
mind, is better known as a brilliant bilingual poet in both Marathi and
English. A writer known to be wary of formulaic responses, well-trodden paths,
and packaged images, whether verbal or visual.

What's less known about Kolatkar is
that he was a product of the J.J. School of Art, and worked as a graphic artist
all his life. No wonder his poetic images have the vividness of a memory flash,
the quicksilver of Cannes-level advertising aphorisms, as he yoked the everyday
with the extraordinary, often scenes from the footpath with controversial
recent pogroms.

The Policeman forefronts Kolatkar's graphic genius. A genius of the same
unforgettable calibre as Shel Silverstein (The Giving Tree) or James
Thurber with his 1939 classic The Last Flower. Or even Spike Milligan's
unique lines. For, Kolatkar's inner eye is sharp (his poems testify to this),
his pen is keen-edged, and his graphic wit both individual and impeccable.

What are these 13 scenes about? The
life of a policeman (recognisably a Mumbaikar), with an irresistible edge to
the delineation that makes this a collector's volume — as we quickly delve
inwards, following the opening image of a forehead with a cigarette between its
lips, from which smoke drifts skywards. A thinker's book, we wonder.

The visuals prove a challenge to
conventional thinking. Imbued with passionate observation, translated into
quirky drawings, Kolatkar melds the mundane with the mystifying, the whimsical
with the wacky. In doing so, he liberates the viewer/ reader to look at the
everyday with layered vision. Until his paper tiger policeman, tired of being
buffeted by life, bites right back.

In one unforgettable episode, the
policeman stands atop his pedestal, directing traffic, with a tiny plant by his
side. A snail enters the picture, followed by a procession of its brethren.
They continue to stride forward as foliage grows to cover the cop, who is all
but invisible, except for his feet. The snail, like life, marches on.

In another, frazzled by lightning,
he's left atop his stand with nothing but a notebook in his hand. Devotion
beyond the call of duty? A third scene in evolution renders him in the thick of
a Mumbai monsoon, until floods sweep him away as he continues to balance
himself on a crested wave, a fish in hand. Where does he end? In a shark's
belly, with a mermaid on his lap!

And so his life grows, through close
encounters with bees, dinosaurs, and even a rainbow that leads to an unusual
honour — until the policeman decides to come into his own.

A rendition of Kolatkar graphics in
mere words cannot do him justice. Not any more than a mere review can summon up
the power and rawness of his celebrated Jejuri cycle of 31 poems,
wrapped around a temple town in western Maharashtra. Or the image-rich Kala
Ghoda Poems, his take on the Fort area of Mumbai, with its tin-pan band, idli
vendor and vendor of rat poison.

When we think of Kolatkar, we summon
up images that defy a second person rendition. And a life guided by a creed
untouched by conventional mores. A dark, brooding, almost mystic creativity
that would not be cubbyholed, labelled or rendered poster-bright.

Kolatkar's graphic graffiti comes
alive through lines that sing and surge, twist and torment. And echo life in
its unpredictable brilliance.

As we turn the last page, we are
impelled to echo the dedication: "Thanks to Vrindavan for preserving the
copy of `The Policeman' all these years from 1969 through 2005. Till now, this
was the only copy on the planet. But for him, the book couldn't have seen the
light of day."

KRISHNA SOBTI is tough to translate. The celebrated grande dame of
Hindi letters is very individual, very stylised, very hard to replicate in
another language.

Within her eclectic oeuvre, she has innovated with literary forms and
dramatic characters, framed within a broadly humanistic vision.

However Katha, true to its reputation as a pioneering Indian translation
house of quality, has risen to the challenge. Sobti's literary craftsmanship
surges to the fore in this rendition.

Even in English, the narrative captures the fluid intricacies, the
well-wrought turns of phrase that distinguish Hindi, whether within the courtly
idiom of the haveli families or the more colloquial bazaar exchanges of
1920s Dilli.

Building on the quintessential love triangle, Sobti demonstrates how
uniquely a skilled practitioner can interpret it. Recreating the waves of love
between Mehak Bano and Kripanarayan, and its impact on the home shores through
his wife Kutumb, the writer summons up the troubled waters beneath a seething
calm.

Is Mehak a roaring sea under her quiet, beautiful exterior? Is Kripa a
restless wave that will answer the call of duty? How will Kutumb avenge the
anguish of years caused by a straying husband? Sobti avoids the pitfalls of the
conventional by etching three distinctive characters, whose lives course
through the novel as surely as the ebbing tides.

The twists and turns in their fates. The social impact of their desires. The
creation of outcasts by duty-bound familial hierarchy. The role of the radical
individual within the societal framework. The impact of passion within the
confines of an arranged marriage, defined by social benefit. These are among
the myriad themes lyrically explored on Sobti's pages. Through three distinct
narrators, who evoke an unforgettable time, a distinct milieu, a cultured
space.

Through a lean, taut structure that serves her plot brilliantly, Sobti
transports the reader into the Delhi of generations ago. A city of commingled
religions. Of a bustling bazaar where distinctive sweets and namkeens,
fine quilts and wedding garments, celebrate everyday creativity. Of a male
chauvinistic preserve, encouraging open forays into forbidden turf. Of
cloistered women who occasionally bypass shackles, often amidst intense
turbulence.

Sobti's canvas is the human heart. Its shimmering shades and unfathomable
depths are captured through social interfaces, layered dialogue and dynamic
characters who evolve into new beings as time wields its unyielding whip.

The dialogue is especially distinctive, each oddly couched English phrase
optimally capturing a characteristic Hindi expression without appearing
unwieldy or misplaced.

And so, wooed by Sobti's authorial authority, we watch each individual voice
intersect on the fabric of the whole. We marvel at the engaging web she weaves,
shimmering with poetry through discord, illuminating us historically and
culturally through crosscurrents.

We remain stunned at the sensitivity with which Sobti handles her male
protagonist, allowing Kripa adequate dignity even as he falls from grace —
thanks to her humanistic overview.

But then, Sobti fans, who recognise her as an honoured custodian of the best
of contemporary Indian literature, are little surprised by the virtues of The
Heart Has Its Reasons, even in translation.

For didn't she cast Daar Se Bichchudi with a Punjabi flavour, while
engaging with Rajasthani culture through Mitro Marjani? Wasn't she the
first Hindi woman litterateur to receive the Sahitya Akademi award? Besides
being the recipient of the Katha Chudamani award for a lifetime's literary
achievement?

This translation, for which Anand and Swami deserve due credit, ensures
Sobti's pre-eminence by reaching out to non-Hindi readers. How else would they
recognise the sterling qualities that mark her as a unique writer?

We hope Katha will, over time, translate all her works for our benefit.
Besides this one, and Ei Lakdi, which they rendered earlier. Because a
taste of Sobti, either in Hindi or in translation, leaves us yearning for more,
much more.

Tuesday, 24 April 2012

I’ve been a journalist since June 1976. Yes, that’s midway
through the hated Emergency in India, when I joined Indian Express, Madras/ Chennai, as a rookie. I’ve read reams of
reportage and editorials and other media output on Kashmir. But I have to
confess that I really did not understand what had happened in Kashmir since
1989 until I read this book by Basharat Peer.

I won’t even try to summarize ‘Curfewed Night.’ It’s an act of love, a splendid interweave of
history, reportage and memoir that moved me intensely the first time I read it in
2010. I can understand with clarity and empathy why a whole generation of
protesters has come into being in Kashmir.

Confessions first. I had never been to Kashmir until 2008,
on our way back from a trek in the Markha Valley in Ladakh. Six of us drove towards
Jammu in a SUV through the dark night past Kargil, Drass and other places that
created a mind buzz from past reportage. I couldn’t sleep. So, I kept my eyes
on the luminous moon overhead.

The jammed mountain roads teemed with army trucks, filled
with men in camouflage fatigues. En route, we were repeatedly stopped to ask if
we had seen an escapee from the army, a Sikh soldier. At one point, we had to
disembark, while army personnel frisked us and emptied out our luggage.

On the way to Srinagar, we didn’t go to Dal Lake. We stopped
at a roadside dhaba for aloo parathas and chai for breakfast. Our eyes took in soldiers
in uniform, their guns pointed at some invisible enemy, in idyllic wheat,
mustard and rice fields.

In Srinagar, armoured personnel carriers rambled through the
streets in daylight. Young men, supposedly on daily errands, were stopped and
searched on the streets. It was definitely a city in siege, mentally, physically
and emotionally.

I’ve been a
journalist, but never a reporter. So, I’ve never been in a minefield or a war
zone. The closest to that experience was probably during the Indo-Pakistan war
of 1965, while I was at school in Jaipur. Sirens went off from time to time. Our
windows were blacked out with paper and paint. During air raid drills, we had
to run out of class or our hostels, and jump into the closest trench. If we had
time, we were told to grab hold of a small bag each with our bare necessities.
It was both exciting and scary at 10 or 11.

Act 2. Then came the war to liberate Bangladesh when I was a
teenager at college in Kolkata in 1971. I recall that Lt. Gen. Jagjit Singh
Arora and his wife, friends of my parents, had come to dinner at our home, along
with others, in November 1971. In
December, Indian troops marched into East Pakistan, which became Bangladesh.
Over 2 million civilians died. Over 400,000 women were raped by the Pakistan
armed forces. I was horrified, more distressed by the day over man’s inhumanity
to humankind. I was a pacifist even then.

Act 3. In the mid-1980s, while at Indian Express, I was
talked into interviewing Gavin Young, who reported for the Sunday Times in London, by our editor Saeed Naqvi. He insisted that
I would find Young intelligent and engaging because he had covered 14 wars
across the globe, including the Vietnam war for over a decade. I’ll never
forget what Young he told me: that wars are not about soldiers and generals,
politicians or power; they are about little people in unknown places who are
impacted by it all. (Young was, after all, a witness to the surrender of
Pakistani Lt. Gen. Niazi to Gen. Arora in a bunker in former East Pakistan).

His home-truth rang sharply through my being as I read Peer’s
human documentary in words. He made me think of the mythical ‘objectivity’ that
is supposed to be the mean in journalism. After all Peer did report for
Tehelka, which I respect. But how can you possibly be objective about your
family, your closest friends, a land that means the world to you? Basharat Peer
brings Kashmir today alive with confidence, emotion ~ and a quiet, yet poetic,
touch. That’s an amazing feat, to my eyes.

Basharat Peer

At just 32 when the book was published in 2008, Peer couched
his reportage with flair and great emotional intelligence. Such as
the impact of the interrogation camp at Papa-2, or the shattering impact of
‘disappeared persons,’ or how the redressal mechanism is totally corrupted, or
the disappearance of Kashmiri Pandits and where they are now.

Take this excerpt about the book’s raison d’etre:

“I shared some stories with a few friends in New Delhi, but
I could never say everything. I would find myself stopping in the middle of a
sentence, choked, rendered inarticulate by memory. The telling, even in the
shade of intimacy, was painful. There was also a sense of shame that overcame
me very time I walked into a bookstore. People from almost every conflict zone
had told their stories: Palestinians, Israelis, Bosnians, Kurds, Tibetans,
Lebanese, East Germans, Africans, East Timorese, and many more. I felt the
absence of our own telling, the unwritten books about the Kashmiri experience,
from the bookshelves, as vividly as the absence of a beloved ~ the empty chair
staring at you across the table in a coffee shop, the vacant seat in a theatre
playing a movie she would have laughed through, the email with an idiosyncratic
title that did not arrive in the inbox. The memories and stories of Kashmir
that I carried with me like my VIP suitcase could fade away. I had to find the
words to save memory from the callous varnish of time. I knew I had to write.
And to write, I had to return and revisit the people and places that had
haunted me for years…”

This is the story of Peer’s life. But it is equally about
the lives of the 70,000 young men who have lost their lives in the ongoing
battle in Kashmir. For bereft of hope,
without access to quality education or good jobs, a youthful generation has
chosen to model its resistance on the stone-throwing youths of the second
Palestinian intifada, not on the
Pakistani militias who trained them to use guns.

Curfewed Night was
on the New Yorker list of the year’s 100 best books. Granta editor John Freeman
picked it among the five best debut books of the year. It won the Vodaphone Crossword
non-fiction award 2008.

Why? For multiple reasons. Peer has access to the men who
move about only at night. He tunes in to those who fight against the might of
the Indian state. But most deeply, he is the voice of real Kashmiri people,
like the old man who, mourning his murdered family, said to Peer: “Go back and tell them what has happened
here.”

Peer has done just that. He reveals the insider truths of Kashmir
of the recent past with an incandescent brilliance that is tragic, poignant,
and impossible to forget. If you’ve been as puzzled as I was about the true story
of this tragic state, this is the one book I would reach for. It lights the way
to understanding.

Monday, 23 April 2012

It's a long and winding journey to Lepakshi in Andhra Pradesh, about
15 km from the railway station at Hindupur. But it's a revitalising
trip for those who believe in heritage sites, for those who marvel
at the art of our ancestors, and those
willing to get away from the routine multiple-destination tourist
routes.

At the height of its fame during the 16th century, Lepakshi was a centre
of pilgrimage and trade. Its main claim to fame was its striking
temple on the small hillock of Kurmasaila, which grew to its present
dimensions when the brothers Viranna and Virupanna, both Nayak chieftains under Achyutaraja of the
Vijayanagar kingdom, enlarged the shrine of Papanasesvara.

Virupanna, as the king's treasurer, had vast sums at his
disposal, which he spent on making Lepakshi a magnificent temple. It
consists of three shrines -- dedicated to Shiva, Vishnu and Virabhadra
-- around a central pavilion with an intermed
iary hall and a hall for ritual dance. Virabhadra, a wrathful
manifestation of Shiva, was the patron deity of the Nayak rulers.

The temple core is surrounded by a large open court entered from the
east with large gopuras to the north and west. A monolithic Nagalinga
-- the largest of its kind in India -- and Ganesha in the second
interior court entice the eye by their sheer
scale and perfection.

The temple interior boasts of imposing sculptures in half-relief on
each of its granite pillars. These depict dancers, drummers and
divine musicians -- such as Brahma playing the drum and Tumburu
playing the veena. The celestial nymph Rambha is
depicted in dance, while Shiva is captured for posterity in the throes
of the ananda tandava. In the intermediary hall, one frieze is
especially striking -- a long line of geese with lotus stalks in their
beaks. No detail has been spared even i
n the central hall between the three shrines, adorned with flawless
carvings of Gajantaka, Ganapati dancing, Durga and a hermaphrodite.

A mural on the wall

Artistically, the Lepakshi temple is most celebrated for its
paintings, though some have vanished while others are palpably
weathered with time. A colossal painting of Virabhadra is almost hidden
in the central hall. On the ceiling of the hall of dance, eight panels depict Puranic legends. One greatly humane
panel captures the story of the Chola king Manunitikanda, who loved to
dispense justice even to animals like the cow!

The use of natural pigments and ancient mural arts makes Lepakshi a
remarkable storehouse of skills on the verge of extinction. The birds,
beasts and foliage depicted in its paintings and carving have spawned a
style often found today in block-printed Indian textiles and rugs, popularly referred to as the Lepakshi
motifs.

The giant Nandi bull

Today, the temple remains the town's main draw, though
maintenance is poor and its priceless works of art have been
ravaged and weathered by the years. Its inhabitants are used to
visitors from afar who descend on them out of the blue
and then are seen no more.

Lepakshi's restaurants are small and offer only standard thali meals
or parathas with sabji. All around the dusty bus stand -- from where
vehicles ply with indeterminate frequency -- we find an abundance of
scattered baskets. On closer inspection,
we find that they contain silkworms gorging on mulberry leaves!

Our visit was during the Dasara festival in October, when the
sanctum sanctorum was ablaze with oil lamps, the air acrid with their
smoke, the floor slippery from the hundreds of bare feet that had
preceded us.

Further reading, on our return to Bangalore, revealed that
Lepakshi is typical of the Vijayanagar style, as seen in the
architecture of the famed Vitthala temple at Hampi or the
portraiture in stone at Chidambaram. History books tell
us that the Vijayanagar style was notable for its huge gopuras,
multiple vimanas, large mandapas and generous courtyard space.
In retrospect, we find that Lepakshi is true to this tradition,
though perhaps as a scaled-down model.

A wonderful granite bull of gigantic dimensions a short distance from
the temple enclosure is closely associated with Lepakshi in the minds
of visitors. It is said to be the largest sculpted Nandi bull in
south India, even larger than the famous one on the Chamundi hill in Mysore.

The pillars in the temple courtyard

Lepakshi is a treasure trove for historians, art connoisseurs those
interested in the preservation and restoration of traditional
Indian art. Even as a single-site town, it rewards the determined
visitor.

But it left us with many questions that haunted us for months
afterwards. Can't concrete steps be taken to preserve what
remains of its priceless murals? Why aren't the surroundings of the
Lepakshi temple in better shape? Isn't it time that
tourist literature on the Lepakshi heritage was made easily available
to visitors, to keep them from falling prey to unlicenced guides who
lurk at every turn in the premises?

Saturday, 21 April 2012

(This piece was written in 2003, when a disturbing incident took place during a brilliant show of photography in Bangalore)

She
stands tall and proud, 10 arms raised in battle-readiness. Despite her benign
expression, each hand holds a weapon as she towers over the demon Mahishasura
whom she has vanquished. Her graceful form is made of pliant clay - the
goddess-in-evolution grows, then acquires drapes of silk or innovative
materials.

Such scenes are common in the crowded bylanes of Kumartulli in Kolkata, where
local artisans create thousands of 'protimas' (images) of the mother
goddess for the annual Durga Puja, an intense, weeklong, socio-cultural
celebration that transcends religion or community.

The scene is replicated at dozens of venues in Chennai, Bangalore or Hyderabad,
where the Bengali community congregates to celebrate the festival to the
resounding beat of the dhaak (drum), the fragrance of incense at the
evening arati (puja), and the crisp rustle of handloom saris.

Images of the goddess and the rituals surrounding Durga Puja are etched on the
nation's collective psyche. And over time, hundreds of photographers have
documented the making of the Kumartulli images. And yet, when "The
Greenroom of the Goddess" - a black-and-white photo-essay on the theme by
Kolkata-based photographer, publisher, and theatre person Naveen Kishore -
opened at an upmarket lifestyle store in Bangalore recently, it was forced to
close within a week.

What happened? Reliable sources reveal that a dozen well-dressed men who
visited the show objected to the "inadequately draped" depiction of
the goddess as "offensive" to their religious sensibilities. They
demanded that 15 of Kishore's 29 frames be withdrawn, effectively bringing the
show to a close.

The store, which had earlier exhibited Kishore's photographs on another theme,
had also displayed outstanding photographic essays by Ketaki Sheth, Dayanita
Singh and Pallon Daruwala.

What does this radical reaction portend? Does it spell a throwback to the 1996
storming of the Husain-Doshi Gufa in Ahmedabad, sparked by a 20-year old
rendition of Saraswati in the nude, during which 16 of the 26 M F Husain
originals were burnt? Or the continuing saga of rightist morality being
superimposed on contemporary Indian culture - a morality glimpsed more often in
Mumbai and New Delhi than in the Indian south?

"What I feel is numbness, in the way you can hear silence in a vacuum. I
feel resignation and sadness. Extreme exhaustion," says Kishore, a
self-confessed amateur photographer, the spirit behind Seagull Books, known for
its quality publishing.

As a photographer, Kishore sees possibilities through a camera lens: "Of
fragments, of moments, of whimsies, of memories that images trigger in me on a
daily basis. That's all." Of the artisan's clothing casually draped over
the image. Of idols stockpiled by the riverside, recycled by urban urchins, or
the debris from the immersion. Just visuals triggered when novelist Amit
Chaudhuri was exploring the idea of an essay on the transformation of Kolkata
during the Pujas, a few years ago.

How do creative people respond to these private intrusions into public spaces?
Noted writer-activist Mahasweta Devi reacts spontaneously: "It's all part
of what the establishment is trying to do. I think we should resist
fundamentalism in every form."

Referring to her recent candidature for the position of President of the
Sahitya Akademi, the feisty Mahasweta Devi adds, "Do you know what canards
were being spread in this context? That the Akademi is being taken over by the
Marxists, the communists, the leftists! I think there should be all-India
protests about every infringement of our basic freedom."

Husain, amidst his 'Theorama' series that depicts nine religions and humanity
at large, veers vehemently in another direction: "This has nothing to do
with religious sentiments. It's all petty politics. These elements want
attention. We should ignore them, just as history will."

What of others who use photography as an artistic tool? Says Bangalore-based
Pushpamala N, "It's the first time this has happened in Bangalore. I think
the intention behind this completely irrational act is to create an atmosphere
of fear in which fundamentalism can grow. After all, it's just a year to the
elections."

Seagull Theatre Quarterly's editor Anjum Katyal, who has lived in Kolkata for
many years, has another view. "Immorality is an imported, perhaps
Victorian, notion. Culturally, we've been traditionally very comfortable with
nudity/nakedness. These images have been created in the same way for over a century,
with an armature fleshed out, covered with paint and cloth. Don't these
elements, who are basically ignorant of our religious practices, realize that
the image is not a goddess until a puja (prayer) invests it with divine
powers?"

How does Bangalore-based Balan Nambiar, a National Award winning artist and
researcher into ritual performing arts of the Indian west coast, enter the
ongoing debate? "Throughout history," he says, "Chola and
Pallava bronzes of goddesses used for worship were depicted bare-breasted,
never with a covered torso. And 'abhishekams' (worship) were conducted
on these figures."

Balan adds, "In Indian mythology, even the goddess Saraswati was always
depicted with her breasts bare." Saraswati symbolises learning, literature
and music.

Is Puritanism, then, replacing the wisdom of our Puranas? Has Indian society
lost sight of the creative latitude it once embraced, including
self-portraiture through nudes that generated wide-scale public debate? Have we
daubed messy fingerprints on the lens of our times?

Even as the debate over such censorship "not by the law" rages, we
have a few choices. To stand up and protest. To turn away and ignore those who
espouse the right of might, whether political or pecuniary. Or to form
coalitions of conscience to safeguard the freedom of expression invested in
each Indian individual by the Constitution.

Aren't these the fundamental norms on which Indian art thrived for centuries?
Will our self-appointed moral brigade take time off to study our rich cultural
ancestry? How will history gauge us in retrospect? Whether as artists,
photographers, viewers or those engaged in the commerce of art, our time starts
now.

What could possibly be new about yet another production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, possibly one
of Shakespeare's most tightly constructed plays? British director Tim Supple's
interpretation at the height of the Indian summer in April 2006 provides an answer.
He engages with almost every aspect he could possibly experiment with.

Touring New Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata en route to the
Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) Complete Works Festival at Stratford-on-Avon in
June, Supple's rendition "creating tomorrow" through collaboration
between the British Council and Hutch comes through as a spirited radical
encounter that leaves no one cold. It proves to be more performance than potent
poetry, enmeshed in the crossed strands between stardust magic and magnetic
love play.

Breaking away from the purist English tradition, the former Young
Vic artistic director and RSC associate presents this first British Council
commissioned theatre production through breakaway ideation, daring his audience
to lose themselves in a theatrical thicket of questions. With a plot familiar
to most urban Indians, Supple is on firm ground.

By the last scene of this dramatised dream at the open-air Buck's
Theatre in Chennai, we want to scream aloud about basic issues. Will this production
with an Indo-Sri Lankan cast work with an audience in Iceland or Indonesia? Why do we soon feel at
home with Shakespearean poetry interwoven through seven languages? Do elements
from bharatanatyam, kalaripayittu,
malkhamb, therukoothu, bhangra and kathakali
fuse into seamless body language that carries the narrative through?

As an audience, what we carry home to revisit are dramatic visual
stimuli, enhanced by set and costume designer Sumant Jayakrishnan's inputs and
brilliant lighting conceptualised by Zuleikha Chaudhari. Of a satin-clad stage
space for a fairytale, swept away with a flourish to reveal bare red earth,
seething with erotic encounters and bestiality between poetic interstices. Of a
paper-clad wooden grid that has its surface ripped to shreds as characters leap
through it in sexual pursuit, in playful chase, in fluent entrances and exits.
Of silken swathes that entrance us as they fuse fluidly to form a hammock for
the fairy queen's dream turned nightmare. Of agile characters suspended between
heaven and earth on ropes, challenging life on intermediate planes. Of rich
costumes donned and doffed as characters flit between identities. Of a
crisscrossed mesh onstage that reflects the tangled lives at play.

Two years in the dreaming, rehearsed over seven weeks at the
Adishakti theatre at Pondicherry, with a 22-member Indo-Sri Lankan cast from a
shortlist of 60 auditioned in Mumbai last July, what pivots does this
production rest on? Two obvious influences surge to mind. Peter Brook's 1970 Stratford
staging with its trapezes and circus-like physicality, its players in primary
colours, pared down to the essential Shakespeare. And Czech critic Jan Kott,
who defined it as a "very powerful sexual play."

As we watch the youthful rough and tumble onstage, each move
imbued with forest grace, a tropical heat surges through the performance under
the boughs, as night birds screech and call overhead. Real life adds a special
soundtrack to Australia-born Devissaro's nuanced score, rendered live by N.
Tiken Singh, Kaushik Dutta and D. Prakash. But one element remains a puzzle a
lingam-like `singing stone' by a simulated water body in the foreground,
perhaps a tool for Puck's spells, which chose to remain silent during the
closing performance in Chennai.

For a play often interpreted, even by intelligences like Woody
Allen and Ingmar Bergman, Utpal Dutt and Habib Tanvir, what makes Supple's
rendition special? Perhaps he sums up its basic premise best in the production
brochure: "I worked with an extraordinary range of artists. We had
sessions where realistic actors worked with dancers and folk artists worked
with experimental physical performers. We had musicians, singers and children.
And most interesting of all, people acted in whatever language was most natural
to them. Dialogues sprung up between English and Bengali, Hindi and Marathi,
Malayalam, Tamil and Sinhalese."

Supple adds, "It was clear that our production had to be
multilingual: to restrict ourselves to performers who worked in English would
be to miss out on a wealth of different ways of making theatre and telling
stories of seeing life and our trials of love, terror and social conflict that
make up the canvas of the play. It would also be a lie. India is
multilingual, Indian theatre is multilingual and whatever else a Shakespearean
play might do, it should seek to reflect the time and place in which it is made
with vivid honesty."

That's essentially what sets this production apart. Its honest
South Asian multiculturalism. Has that led to an exotic, export-oriented
experience? Are there neo-colonial notes underpinning the venture?

Not if we tune in to the cast and crew, who resonate with total
theatre. Joy Fernandes, who plays an irresistible Bottom, recalls the physical
rigour of rehearsals. The result? Impeccable body interfaces and pacing.
Perfect tableaux. Surcharged emotional exchanges. Chandan Roy Sanyal, who dons
Lysander's role, says, "I couldn't quite understand this character, until
Tim explained one day: `He's a poet, who's in love with the idea of being in
love.' After that, it was much easier. I enjoyed doing some of Shakespeare with
the lyrical sweetness of Bengali."

Looking back, Supple remembers weekly sessions where the cast
grappled with a key issue: `What is the play all about?'

With mixed feedback from Indian audiences, even those stunned by
the production's integrity and aesthetics now wonder: how will it be received
at the Swan Theatre at Stratford?
Will purists be up in arms? Sprightly Yuki Ellias, who plays Hermia, is
unequivocal in her opinion: "They will love us."

That's the quintessential challenge as Supple and his well-honed
ensemble do a reality check on whether all the world's their stage.